Green grant cancellations were 'based solely' on states' political affiliation, Trump administration says in court

Federal green grants canceled last year were selected "solely" based on a state's political affiliation, the Trump administration said in a recent court filing. In the filing, Department of Energy (DOE) lawyer Jeff Novak said the department came up with a list of 624 grants slated for potential termination. Novak said the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) selected 284 of those grants to be included in a tranche of cancellations. He wrote that all except one of the 284 grants OMB selected had ties to states that voted for then-Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 and had two Democratic-caucusing senators. Novak noted that the other 340 grants have not been canceled. "DOE accepts that the inclusion of grants in the October notice tranche was based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient's state," he wrote. He added that the grants' inclusion in the October cancellations was not "based on any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction, or performance-based factor." Novak's filing indicated that while the OMB's selections were political, for the original list of 624 cancellations proposed by the DOE, "the political identity of the grant recipient's state was not a factor." Last year, OMB Director Russell Vought announced that the administration was cutting nearly $8 billion in green energy-related funding. He particularly touted that grants would be cut in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington state. Democrats have accused the administration of politicizing the cancellations. Energy Secretary Chris Wright has repeatedly said in Capitol Hill testimony that while the timing of the announcement may have been political, the actual selection was not. In an email, Energy Department spokesperson Ben Dietderich said that Wright's statements "are still correct." "None of the termination decisions were based on political considerations," Dietderich said. However, Democrats said Friday that the filing vindicated their suspicions. "This administration has now admitted in court what has long been obvious: it terminated nearly 300 cost-cutting energy projects for no reason other than the fact that the states they were in did not vote for the president in the 2024 election," said a joint statement by the top energy appropriations Democrats, Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.) and Rep. Marcy Kaptur (Ohio). "This is an astounding admission that the president and his team corruptly abused their power to kill good jobs and punish hard-working families because of their political views," they added. They also criticized Wright's statements before Congress. "Secretary Wright swore up and down for months that these project terminations had absolutely nothing to do with politics, and now his lawyers are declaring that, in fact, politics was the only consideration," the Democrats said. In a similar filing last year, Trump administration lawyers acknowledged that political affiliation played a role, but the newer filing says that the inclusion of the grants was "based solely" on politics.